1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid composition, a recording method using the liquid composition, and a recorded matter recorded by the recording method.
2. Description of the Background
Currently, in order to respond to a demand for recording a color image in an inexpensive manner, an inkjet recording method, which is capable of recording an image by application of a number of inks of different colors to a medium for recording (referred to as “a recording medium” hereinafter) without a coated layer such as a plain paper, has been used. In such a method, an ink is applied to a recording medium to which a coated layer has not been provided, and thus the ink is directly absorbed by paper, which is a support for the recording medium. Such absorption of the ink by the paper tends to lower quality of the recorded recording medium (referred to as “recorded matter” hereinafter) due to bleeding.
To solve this problem, an ink of low permeability is used for recording to thereby suppress penetration of the ink into a recording medium, and as a result, bleeding at a boarder between the recording medium and ink of the recorded matter (referred to as “feathering” hereinafter) is prevented. In this case, however, the ink tends to stay on a surface of the recording medium, and thus drying properties of the recorded matter degrades.
When the drying properties of the recorded matter is low, any contact to the ink before drying, such as with fingers, may cause smear in the image, or in case of recording of color image bleeding may be occurred at the boarder between inks (referred to as “color bleeding” hereinafter) by unintentionally depositing an ink of one color onto another ink of another color before dying. In the case where an ink of high permeability is used for preventing color bleeding, the aforementioned feathering occurs, which lowers the quality of the resulting recorded matter.
To solve these problems at the same time, there is a description of a recording method in which an ink and a liquid composition, which helps the ink to be fixed on a recording medium, are used. For example, there is an inkjet recording method in which an ink and a liquid composition containing certain polymer particles are deposited on a recording medium to perform recording (see International Application Publication No. WO 2000/06390).
In this description, the dispersion state of a coloring agent contained in the ink is destroyed by polyallkyl amine contained in the liquid composition, once the liquid composition and the ink are brought into contact to each other, and then the coloring agent is aggregated, which realizes image printing without causing significant bleeding. However, using the polymer particles has a problem in the stability of the liquid composition. A large amount of polymer particles is required to fix the ink using the polymer particles. The liquid composition having a large amount of the polymer particles tends to increase its viscosity, and such liquid composition tends to cause problems such as in jetting stability or storage stability, as the viscosity thereof increases.
As a recording method without using particles in a liquid composition, there is a description of a recording method using an ink and a liquid composition containing a certain organic acid and a certain organic amine compound (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2006-35689). In accordance with this description, once the liquid composition and the ink are mixed, the pH (potential hydrogen) value of the mixture stays at the side of acid, which can effectively aggregates a coloring agent contained in the ink.
This method using the acidic liquid composition, however, has a problem in fixing ability of the ink. When an ink is applied to a surface of a recording medium, which has been treated with the acidic liquid composition, the coloring agent contained in the ink are immediately aggregated and deposited on the recording medium. This layer of the deposited coloring agent has low resistance to abrasion (referred to as “abrasion resistance” hereinafter), and thus hands of users, back surfaces of printed matter, and the like may be smeared with the ink by being in contact with the recorded matter after drying.